Top 10 Founder Articles for The Week

Hey guys, I've been a long-time reader of HackerNews, and found the founder-oriented articles there to be world-class (far better on anything I've seen on Reddit or any other community (except IndieHackers, of course :) ). I curated a list of the top 10 articles relevant to tech founders. Here you go:

1. Good writing is a business advantage (447 votes)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23006106

This article explains why copywriting is such an important skill. They divide communication into 3 parts, "the three Ds":

a) Definition ( What does a product, service, person or company actually do? How do we define them in a brief, ownable and memorable way.)

b) Demonstration (good for capturing value, people pay attention to things that are interesting)

c) Dissemination. How do we use the 32 million channels people tune into these days to get our messages out?

2. Pricing Your Product (456 votes)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23053271

The Sequoia Capital Guide to Pricing. One valuable comment was:

"One of the biggest lessons I've learned as a VC in the past few years is that pricing really has to be aligned with and proportional to the value your product provides. If someone gets $100 of value per seat and you charge $15/seat, that's great. If you charge $15/seat for a product that creates value per gigabyte, people start gaming the system. E.g. they'll buy one seat for their company and ask that person to be the proxy user for your product. Or if you charge $10/GB and people get $20/GB of value of the first few gigabytes and then $5/GB of value after that, you're going to run into problems.

So figure out how users perceive and quantify your value to themselves, and then try to come up with a simple pricing scheme that captures 10-25% of that value. That way every time someone pays you $1, they get $4-$10 of value, and that's a no brainer purchase."

3. Signs that a business idea will probably fail (266 votes)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23059786

Covers some important points to consider before acting on your idea. Some I found valuable are:

a) Don't be completely clueless about what you're getting info. According to the author, "If I think about the ideas that have worked for me, I’ve been able to utilize a lot of my existing skills to make them work."

b) Don't try to change buying habits.

c) Your offering is not interesting enough. I personally remember these "writing + AI" companies that were, in fact, 99% writing services. Try to think to add something interesting to your service/product.

4. I Spent $6M on Google Ads Last Year (417 votes)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22996330

Has some nice pointers for advertising on Google. One thing that stood out for me is "the house always wins" section:

"Target CPA is like buying a car and telling the salesman the highest price you’re willing to pay right at the beginning. Of course they’re going to sell you the car at that price, but you could’ve gotten it for less."

So when trying to get something from a PPC network like AdWords, tell them what you want up-front. If you ask for clicks, they will give you clicks (but not necessarily conversions). If you ask for conversions, it will try its best to give you conversions.

5. How to sell a B2B product (624 votes)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23052001

The nice thing about software is that it's not like commodities (like coffee). It would be outrageout for an ordinary shop to sell a cup of coffee for $50. Not so much if you're a SaaS, and if you deliver $500 of business value for that $50. Some of the main points of the article are:

Not sales, consulting
Teach people something they don't already know (non-obvious, 'wow why I didn't find this out 6 months ago'-type
Before/after states

They also offer a "closing mantra" template that goes like this:

If I understand correctly, you want to achieve the following business outcomes…
Which require the capabilities to...
And impact the following metrics...
Here’s how we do it…
And here’s how we outpace our competition…
For more info, you can check out the following proof points…

6. The weird, get-rich-quick world of dropshipping (342 votes)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23041138

A great article about the good & dark side of dropshipping. Shows you what can happen to a business if it suddenly gets flooded with competitors. Also, a recurring pattern that happens in low-barrier-to-entry industries:

Once enough people enter the market, the people who make money are the "gurus", now they have highly motivated buyers ready to do anything to become successful...and the only thing separating them from their dream life is the gurus $600 magic course.

7. Startup Offense and Defense in the Recession (93 votes)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23047488

When crisis strikes, do you do offense or defense? Both. This article gives you some ideas. One useful thing they mention is reviewing your customer industries:

See what % of the people you sell or (or your clients sell to) are travel/hospitality/similar industries that were hit.

8. Ask HN: Learning the business-side of things as a developer? (199 votes)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23050717
Some interesting advice for a developer who wants to venture into creating software. Some of the more useful comments:

Read interviews from founders who went to the trenches and did it (on sites like IndieHackers). See books like "Traction" or "Start Small, Stay Small"

A solo developer who grew a business that now has 40+ employees said:
At the crux of it, business is all about scarcity. There is no other magic out there. A great question to ask yourself is: How many people want what I sell and how many people are already serving it.

9. I could do that in a weekend (2016) (336 votes)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23019816

Have you ever seen a popular product and thought: Well, I could do that in a weekend? Well, you're probably forgetting about at least 2-3 other (and far more important aspects) of having a successful business. Read this article before you spend 2 weeks copying a successull software business.

10. WebWormHole: Send files quickly using WebRTC (630 votes)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23023675

WebRTC is the technology that powers a lot of video conferencing software. It seems this is just the tip of the iceberg of what's possible.

Looks like you can do a lot more with it, like peer-to-peer file transfer over the web (like this example). If you're looking to innovate on a particular technology, WebRTC is definitely a good candidate.

Hope you found these useful! If you want to get a list like this each week, feel free to subscribe to my free newsletter: https://founderweeklys.com/